The invention relates to an apparatus or afterburner for association with initial combustion means, such as an incinerator or furnace, to treat or further burn combustion products from the initial incinerator.
Waste products formed in gloveboxes in processes which employ plutonium or other radioactive materials may be contaminated with these radioactive materials. It may be desirable to process these contaminated waste products to extract and remove the radioactive fractions therefrom. At the same time, the processing method should be such as to insure the containment of all contaminants.
The processes for recovering such contaminants require that the plutonium be essentially completely recovered, that an incinerator operate at a temperature greater than 800.degree.C so that both volatile carbon and fixed carbon are completely removed from the ash, that an incinerator temperature be at near or not much greater than 800.degree.C to prevent or minimize heating plutonium dioxide to temperatures much greater than this since plutonium dioxide formed at temperatures much greater than 800.degree.C, such as 1,000.degree.C, is dissolved with increasing difficulty as the forming temperature increases, and that incinerator and process components be resistant to hydrochloric acid corrosion since one of the principal products of combustion of the above waste products is hydrochloric acid.
Prior processes and apparatus have disadvantages such that fine carbon carried by combustion gases may not be burned, there is a large amount of soot in the off-gas system, and there is a considerable amount of time and economic loss in replacing filters and maintaining the filtering system. An off-gas system as used herein refers to an exhaust system using a suction fan or the like to pull air into the incinerator to promote combustion and remove heat and combustion products from the system.